Download or read book Breakout Pilgrim in the Microworld written by David Sudnow and published by Boss Fight Books. This book was released on 2020-02-26 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just as the video game console market was about to crash into the New Mexico desert in 1983, professor and sociologist David Sudnow was unearthing the secrets of “eye, mind, and the essence of video skill” through an exploration of Atari’s Breakout, one of the earliest hits of the arcade world. Originally released under the title Pilgrim in the Microworld, Sudnow’s groundbreaking longform criticism of a single game predates the rise of game studies by decades. While its earliest critics often scorned the idea of a serious book about an object of play, the book’s modern readers remain fascinated by an obsessive, brilliant, and often hilarious quest to learn to play Breakout just as one would learn the piano. Featuring a new foreword and freshly edited text, Breakout makes a perfect addition to Boss Fight’s lineup of critical, historical, and personal looks at single video games. We’re proud to restore this classic to print and share with new audiences Sudnow’s wild pilgrimage into the limitless microworld of play.
Download or read book Pilgrim in the Microworld written by David Sudnow and published by . This book was released on 1983-01-01 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pilgrim in the Microworld written by Neil David, Sr. and published by Grand Central Pub. This book was released on 1984-01-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the human mind and body's interaction with the computer in its most compelling form, the video game, focuses on the author's own obsessed immersion in a computer game and its possibilities
Download or read book Rules of Play written by Katie Salen Tekinbas and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-09-25 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An impassioned look at games and game design that offers the most ambitious framework for understanding them to date. As pop culture, games are as important as film or television—but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games. Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like "play," "design," and "interactivity." They look at games through a series of eighteen "game design schemas," or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance. Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.
Download or read book Ways of the Hand written by David Sudnow and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is David Sudnow's classic account of how his hands learned to improvise jazz on the piano. David Sudnow is the author of Passing On and editor of Studies in Social Interaction. Since writing this book, he has developed a piano training method based on its insights.
Download or read book Metagaming written by Stephanie Boluk and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The greatest trick the videogame industry ever pulled was convincing the world that videogames were games rather than a medium for making metagames. Elegantly defined as “games about games,” metagames implicate a diverse range of practices that stray outside the boundaries and bend the rules: from technical glitches and forbidden strategies to Renaissance painting, algorithmic trading, professional sports, and the War on Terror. In Metagaming, Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux demonstrate how games always extend beyond the screen, and how modders, mappers, streamers, spectators, analysts, and artists are changing the way we play. Metagaming uncovers these alternative histories of play by exploring the strange experiences and unexpected effects that emerge in, on, around, and through videogames. Players puzzle through the problems of perspectival rendering in Portal, perform clandestine acts of electronic espionage in EVE Online, compete and commentate in Korean StarCraft, and speedrun The Legend of Zelda in record times (with or without the use of vision). Companies like Valve attempt to capture the metagame through international e-sports and online marketplaces while the corporate history of Super Mario Bros. is undermined by the endless levels of Infinite Mario, the frustrating pranks of Asshole Mario, and even Super Mario Clouds, a ROM hack exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art. One of the only books to include original software alongside each chapter, Metagaming transforms videogames from packaged products into instruments, equipment, tools, and toys for intervening in the sensory and political economies of everyday life. And although videogames conflate the creativity, criticality, and craft of play with the act of consumption, we don’t simply play videogames—we make metagames.
Download or read book Music Video Games written by Michael Austin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-07-28 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music Video Games takes a look (and listen) at the popular genre of music games – video games in which music is at the forefront of player interaction and gameplay. With chapters on a wide variety of music games, ranging from well-known console games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band to new, emerging games for smartphones and tablets, scholars from diverse disciplines and backgrounds discuss the history, development, and cultural impact of music games. Each chapter investigates important themes surrounding the ways in which we play music and play with music in video games. Starting with the precursors to music games - including Simon, the hand-held electronic music game from the 1980s, Michael Austin's collection goes on to discuss issues in musicianship and performance, authenticity and “selling out,” and composing, creating, and learning music with video games. Including a glossary and detailed indices, Austin and his team shine a much needed light on the often overlooked subject of music video games.
Download or read book How Emotions Work written by Jack Katz and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1999-11-15 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, a professor of sociology reveals the extraordinarily poetic and coherent logic of emotional experience, and revolutionizes the study of this enigmatic and essential aspect of human life. 67 illustrations.
Download or read book An Introduction to Game Studies written by Frans Mäyrä and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2008-02-18 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Introduction to Game Studies is the first introductory textbook for students of game studies. It provides a conceptual overview of the cultural, social and economic significance of computer and video games and traces the history of game culture and the emergence of game studies as a field of research. Key concepts and theories are illustrated with discussion of games taken from different historical phases of game culture. Progressing from the simple, yet engaging gameplay of Pong and text-based adventure games to the complex virtual worlds of contemporary online games, the book guides students towards analytical appreciation and critical engagement with gaming and game studies. Students will learn to: - Understand and analyse different aspects of phenomena we recognise as ′game′ and play′ - Identify the key developments in digital game design through discussion of action in games of the 1970s, fiction and adventure in games of the 1980s, three-dimensionality in games of the 1990s, and social aspects of gameplay in contemporary online games - Understand games as dynamic systems of meaning-making - Interpret the context of games as ′culture′ and subculture - Analyse the relationship between technology and interactivity and between ′game′ and ′reality′ - Situate games within the context of digital culture and the information society With further reading suggestions, images, exercises, online resources and a whole chapter devoted to preparing students to do their own game studies project, An Introduction to Game Studies is the complete toolkit for all students pursuing the study of games. The companion website at www.sagepub.co.uk/mayra contains slides and assignments that are suitable for self-study as well as for classroom use. Students will also benefit from online resources at www.gamestudiesbook.net, which will be regularly blogged and updated by the author. Professor Frans Mäyrä is a Professor of Games Studies and Digital Culture at the Hypermedia Laboratory in the University of Tampere, Finland.
Download or read book Replayed written by Henry Lowood and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2023-06-06 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The purpose of this book is to consolidate the author's far-flung publications into a single work to give students and scholars the opportunity to read and teach his scholarly output as a single corpus of thought. This book offers the author's most significant pieces on game history, game historiography, software preservation, software collections, virtual worlds/machinima, play-capture, and documentation"--
Download or read book Raising the Stakes written by T. L. Taylor and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-01-30 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How a form of play becomes a sport: players, agents, referees, leagues, tournaments, sponsorships, and spectators, and the culture of professional computer game play. Competitive video and computer game play is nothing new: the documentary King of Kong memorably portrays a Donkey Kong player's attempts to achieve the all-time highest score; the television show Starcade (1982–1984) featured competitions among arcade game players; and first-person shooter games of the 1990s became multiplayer through network play. A new development in the world of digital gaming, however, is the emergence of professional computer game play, complete with star players, team owners, tournaments, sponsorships, and spectators. In Raising the Stakes, T. L. Taylor explores the emerging scene of professional computer gaming and the accompanying efforts to make a sport out of this form of play. In the course of her explorations, Taylor travels to tournaments, including the World Cyber Games Grand Finals (which considers itself the computer gaming equivalent of the Olympics), and interviews participants from players to broadcasters. She examines pro-gaming, with its highly paid players, play-by-play broadcasts, and mass audience; discusses whether or not e-sports should even be considered sports; traces the player's path from amateur to professional (and how a hobby becomes work); and describes the importance of leagues, teams, owners, organizers, referees, sponsors, and fans in shaping the structure and culture of pro-gaming. Taylor connects professional computer gaming to broader issues: our notions of play, work, and sport; the nature of spectatorship; the influence of money on sports. And she examines the ongoing struggle over the gendered construction of play through the lens of male-dominated pro-gaming. Ultimately, the evolution of professional computer gaming illuminates the contemporary struggle to convert playful passions into serious play.
Download or read book Esport Play written by Veli-Matti Karhulahti and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-06-11 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Weaving the author's own lived experience with theoretical insights from the fields of game studies, psychology, and anthropology, Esport Play probes and advances current gaming topics such as addiction, skill development, and toxicity. With a focus on League of Legends – one of the flagship esports of our time – Karhulahti explicates what esport play is: documenting and identifying competitive play as a present-day means to satisfy basic human needs. Ultimately, the book presents a theory of psycholudic development that explains and organizes the development of player-play relationships that may last for years.
Download or read book Introduction to Game Analysis written by Clara Fernández-Vara and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-17 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Game analysis allows us to understand games better, providing insight into the player-game relationship, the construction of the game, and its sociocultural relevance. As the field of game studies grows, videogame writing is evolving from the mere evaluation of gameplay, graphics, sound, and replayablity, to more reflective writing that manages to convey the complexity of a game and the way it is played in a cultural context. Introduction to Game Analysis serves as an accessible guide to analyzing games using strategies borrowed from textual analysis. Clara Fernández-Vara’s concise primer provides instruction on the basic building blocks of game analysis—examination of context, content and reception, and formal qualities—as well as the vocabulary necessary for talking about videogames' distinguishing characteristics. Examples are drawn from a range of games, both digital and non-digital—from Bioshock and World of Warcraft to Monopoly—and the book provides a variety of exercises and sample analyses, as well as a comprehensive ludography and glossary.
Download or read book Ultima and Worldbuilding in the Computer Role Playing Game written by Carly A. Kocurek and published by Amherst College Press. This book was released on 2024-04-09 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ultima and World-Building in the Computer Role-Playing Game is the first scholarly book to focus exclusively on the long-running Ultima series of computer role-playing games (RPG) and to assess its lasting impact on the RPG genre and video game industry. Through archival and popular media sources, examinations of fan communities, and the game itself, this book historicizes the games and their authors. By attending to the salient moments and sites of game creation throughout the series’ storied past, authors Carly A. Kocurek and Matthew Thomas Payne detail the creative choices and structural forces that brought Ultima’s celebrated brand of role-playing to fruition. This book first considers the contributions of series founder and lead designer, Richard Garriott, examining how his fame and notoriety as a pioneering computer game auteur shaped Ultima’s reception and paved the way for the evolution of the series. Next, the authors retrace the steps that Garriott took in fusing analog, tabletop role-playing with his self-taught lessons in computer programming. Close textual analyses of Ultima I outline how its gameplay elements offered a foundational framework for subsequent innovations in design and storytelling. Moving beyond the game itself, the authors assess how marketing materials and physical collectibles amplified its immersive hold and how the series’ legions of fans have preserved the series. Game designers, long-time gamers, and fans will enjoy digging into the games’ production history and mechanics while media studies and game scholars will find Ultima and World-Building in the Computer Role-Playing Game a useful extension of inquiry into authorship, media history, and the role of fantasy in computer game design.
Download or read book A Play of Bodies written by Brendan Keogh and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-04-06 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation of the embodied engagement between the playing body and the videogame: how player and game incorporate each other. Our bodies engage with videogames in complex and fascinating ways. Through an entanglement of eyes-on-screens, ears-at-speakers, and muscles-against-interfaces, we experience games with our senses. But, as Brendan Keogh argues in A Play of Bodies, this corporal engagement goes both ways; as we touch the videogame, it touches back, augmenting the very senses with which we perceive. Keogh investigates this merging of actual and virtual bodies and worlds, asking how our embodied sense of perception constitutes, and becomes constituted by, the phenomenon of videogame play. In short, how do we perceive videogames? Keogh works toward formulating a phenomenology of videogame experience, focusing on what happens in the embodied engagement between the playing body and the videogame, and anchoring his analysis in an eclectic series of games that range from mainstream to niche titles. Considering smartphone videogames, he proposes a notion of co-attentiveness to understand how players can feel present in a virtual world without forgetting that they are touching a screen in the actual world. He discusses the somatic basis of videogame play, whether games involve vigorous physical movement or quietly sitting on a couch with a controller; the sometimes overlooked visual and audible pleasures of videogame experience; and modes of temporality represented by character death, failure, and repetition. Finally, he considers two metaphorical characters: the “hacker,” representing the hegemonic, masculine gamers concerned with control and configuration; and the “cyborg,” less concerned with control than with embodiment and incorporation.
Download or read book Fun Taste Games written by John Sharp and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reclaiming fun as a meaningful concept for understanding games and play. “Fun” is somewhat ambiguous. If something is fun, is it pleasant? Entertaining? Silly? A way to trick students into learning? Fun also has baggage—it seems inconsequential, embarrassing, child's play. In Fun, Taste, & Games, John Sharp and David Thomas reclaim fun as a productive and meaningful tool for understanding and appreciating play and games. They position fun at the heart of the aesthetics of games. As beauty was to art, they argue, fun is to play and games—the aesthetic goal that we measure our experiences and interpretations against. Sharp and Thomas use this fun-centered aesthetic framework to explore a range of games and game issues—from workplace bingo to Meow Wolf, from basketball to Myst, from the consumer marketplace to Marcel Duchamp. They begin by outlining three elements for understanding the drive, creation, and experience of fun: set-outsideness, ludic forms, and ambiguity. Moving from theory to practice and back again, they explore the complicated relationships among the titular fun, taste, and games. They consider, among other things, the dismissal of fun by game journalists and designers; the seminal but underinfluential game Myst, and how tastes change over time; the shattering of the gamer community in Gamergate; and an aesthetics of play that goes beyond games.
Download or read book Distributed Ambient and Pervasive Interactions written by Norbert Streitz and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-10 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions, DAPI 2019, held as part of the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2019, in Orlando, Florida, USA, in July 2019. A total of 1274 papers and 209 posters have been accepted for publication in the HCII 2019 proceedings from a total of 5029 submissions. The 36 papers included in this volume were organized in topical sections on IoT and big data; smart cities and built environments; perception and emotion in DAPI; and DAPI for health and learning.
